When
I saw this in my grandmothers garden I knew I was on the right track to
talk about the Yaupon Holly. This plant is big medicine. Everywhere you
read about it there are white folks telling you about what it was used
for by native people or sometimes they just skip that all together to
point out that yaupon is North America's only native caffeine plant.
[ and yes folks, the Kingdom of Hawai'i is not really America ]
Yaupon is documented to have been a heavily traded plant from the Rappahannock in VA to the Tequesta in FL. The trade also extended to enslaved peoples as it was found to be cultivated on plantations throughout the Southeast.
Firstly,
yaupon is a ceremony herb. It is used in ceremony all over the
Southeast. In the Florida Seminole community it is used in a concoction
delivered to participants of the annual green corn celebrations which
marks the beginning of the New Year. When the corn is young, clans come
together to acknowledge the past year, give thanks and purge. One of the
ways purification or purging takes form is in the administration of a
drink which likely is made with berries of the yaupon tree. After all,
yaupon is a holly and holly's are poisonous. For instance, Pokeberry and
Mullein seeds are both poisonous, so ingesting the seeds would bring
about vomiting. You body is expelling poisons and other bad medicine
from its' system ( spirit ). Vomiting is an age old indigenous routine
to purge your spirit of things that may intend to harm you. General
purification. My grandma told my dad and his brothers never eat the
berries on this bush cause it was Indian medicine. Yet she cultivated
this plant on her property because as with all poisons they contain
great medicine. I am definite she used the leaves to make teas for her
clients after childbirth to strengthen their cavities. The leaves of the
Yaupon ( young and green ) are used as medicine. The tea has a
light-to-dark caramel color when brewed. It contains 30% more
antioxidants than regular green tea and has a higher caffeine content
than coffee ️#folksways #yaupon #medicinalteas #poskita #isk #hhr #hushharborrootworks #florida #medicinefolk #happynewyear #corndance
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